Iskra’s Choice

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title = “Iskra’s Choice”
author = [“Jacob Little”]
date = 2022-02-20
draft = false
+++

{{< figure src="/ox-hugo/sexuation.jpg" >}}

This was originally going to be three (or four) different posts, but I realized they were all connected and this was going to work out pretty well. Each section is smaller than the last, forgive me for this but that’s just how my point developed. A large part of this is an elucidation of sexual difference for its relevance to Iskraism. The rest is an incomplete explanation of Iskraism’s combination of sophistry and philosophy. A lot of Badiou is implicit in this, but I have purposely chose not to cite anything or formally quote any specific text to avoid entering into the discourse of the master or an academic discourse. We are not academic! This is perhaps the discourse of the hysteric, but Lacan’s four discourses are pretty much a sham anyways. In any case, it’s purposely informal, I use a lot of parentheticals (the most useful punctuation, and yet the most underused. e.e. cummings shows off the power of parentheses the best).

The great French psychoanalytic thinker Jacques Lacan is often critcized for being difficult to understand. People exposed to the density of his Ecrits and the ramblings of his seminars have recourse to the accusation of “charlatry” towards Lacan. I do not seek to redeem Lacan in the eyes of those who do not (or refuse to) understand him, but it is clear Lacan himself did not help his case for those accusing him of obscurity. His _mathemes_ such as the one above represent a side of Lacan that is painful to work through for those unfamiliar with the mathematical formalism he attempts to reckon with. What’s ironic about the _mathemes_ is that despite their obvious difficulty, Lacan actually first created them for the purpose of teaching others about psychoanalysis. At the most simple, a _matheme_ is a formalization of a psychoanalytic idea or truth into mathematical formulas. Most people write this off as entirely unecessary, claiming that since Lacan has to then explain the formulas in normal language, he would be better off to just explain it without the formulas in order to reduce obscurity.

What I seek to show is the necessity of such univocal expression that the _matheme_ contains along with the typical equivocal expressions of language. Lacan refers to this equivocation through slips of the tongue, jokes, wordplay, and other examples of the joyful mess of language as “_lalangue_” a french neologism where he just combines the article _la_ with the french word for language or tongue, _langue_. For Lacan, _lalangue_ is the only way a subject can first even enter into the realm of language. A baby starts out in language by simply babbling and playing around with sounds and repetition. The domain of the symbolic structure then enters and sets rules down for language, grammar and spelling, which enacts a repression of _lalangue_. It is the task of the psychoanalyst then, to pay attention to instances of _lalangue_ for what they say about the unconscious.

## Sexuation {#sexuation}

The _matheme_ above is (perhaps unfortunately) one of the simpler formulas out there. This contains the famous “formulas of sexuation”: four formulas describing the cut or difference in the two sexes with the great conclusion that “there is no sexual relation”, there is no one to one correspondence between the two sexes or any notion of “you complete me” in the sexual relationship. There is only failure.

These formulas require a basic knowledge of the language of first order logic. When one writes \\(\exists X\\), the \\(\exists\\) operator is called the existential quantifier and can be interepreted as saying that “there exists atleast one X”. The \\(\forall\\) operator is the universal quantifier and can be read as saying “for all X”. \\(\Phi X\\) is a predicate being applied to X. So for Lacan, \\(\Phi\\) is the phallic function, castration, signifying a lack in the subject. A line over a formula denotes a negation, so \\(\overline{\Phi X}\\) would mean that X is not predicated, not subject to castration in Lacan’s case. \\(X\\) is the thing being acted on, in these formulas \\(X\\) is the set of humans to be sexed.

The masculine formula on the left is that

\\(\exists X~\overline{\Phi X} \\\\
\forall X~\Phi X\\)

meaning that all men are subject to castration, but there exists at least one man that is not subject to castration. This exception to castration is what makes the set of men universal, a closed set. This exception is the masculine ideal of someone that escapes castration like John Wayne that is necessary to constitute the whole. All men are constituted in relation to the ideal man, and they necessarily always come up short.

The feminine formula on the right is that

\\(\overline{\exists X}~\overline{\Phi X} \\\\
\overline{\forall X}~\Phi X\\)

Meaning that there is no woman that is not subject to castration, but not-all women are subject to castration. There is therefore no corresponding singular feminine ideal like there is for masculinity. The set of women is open and cannot be universalized. The feminine ideals are split between the demand for one to be both the virgin mother and the sex object at once. This “not-all” is what keeps women from being universalized.

What careful readers may notice about these two positions is that logically they in fact say the same thing! The feminine negation of the universal quantifier (the not-all) means the same thing as affirming the existential quantifier (there exists atleast one). Thus the sexual difference of Lacan does not reside (as conservatives would have it) in a contradiction between the two sexes, forever battling it out, but actually in a radical indifference towards each other. [^fn:1]. The radical antinomy and antagonism of sexual difference that scholars like to speak of actually resides in the contradictory formulas internal to each position. The masculine exception is logically impossible, and Lacan does not mean to suggest that it actually exists (it does not exist, it insists). The feminine not-all is also contradictory, to say that no one escapes castration, but not-all women are subject to castration seems absurd. If both sides mean the same thing, perhaps the two sexual positions constitute two different reactions to the same castration that they describe, masculine rejecting castration and feminine accepting it.

The two sides of the formulas of sexuation are a good explanation of the two sides of Lacan’s works: the precision and univocity inherent to mathematical formalism occupies a distinctly masculine position, whereas his purposeful ramblings, his jokes, and his wordplay are distinctly feminine. The _matheme_ aspires to reach the level of the masculine exception, free from the castration (lack) that language brings with it because one can only ever speak indirectly in language, whereas mathematical formalism allows precision and univocal expression. _Lalangue_ on the other hand embraces the incompleteness of the feminine set in all its castration and lack of exception. This idea is played out quite well in a book that Barbara Cassin and Alain Badiou did together called “There’s No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship”. Badiou offers a reading of Lacan on the side of _matheme_ and masculinity, whereas Cassin praises the feminine side of wordplay and equivocity of _lalangue_.

One may question how heteronormative this logic of sexuation is, or perhaps one wants to consider how a non-binary person is constituted in relation to these categories of man and woman. Why only two? Just as a very brief defence, I would like to point out that what we are concerned with here is only sex (not in the biological sense, which is a dead end for Lacan) and not gender. There are only two logics here because those are the only two possibilites! Furthermore, man and woman are constituted from the same set \\(X\\) because to Lacan, they can only be constituted in (non-) relation to each other. A subject can either embrace castration or deny it. Many books and hundreds of essays have been written on this topic, and I just want to talk about what is relevant to my point here[^fn:2].

## Sophistry or Philosophy? {#sophistry-or-philosophy}

Cassin’s praise of _lalangue_ is to her an embrace of sophistry over philosophy. Praising equivocation and indirectness, Cassin claims that psychoanalysis requires a reading of the unconscious as a work of sophistry, containing all the slips and puns and such of lalangue, in short: the unsconscious has the ability to produce truth only by speaking indirectly, and this is precisely the goal of sophistry too.
In the opening to their book, Badiou and Cassin state that what they are dealing with is
“a new confrontation between, or a new distribution of, the masculinity of Plato and the feminity of sophistics” because Badiou remains attached to Plato’s rejection of sophistry and extolling of philosophy instead as the place for truth[^fn:3]. Insofar as the _matheme_ is the ideal of philosophy, Badiou sees its univocity as the only way to express truths.

The main characteristic of sophistry is its tendency to run into “impasses of the real”, the equivocation, ambiguity, and slips where language fails to be exact and instead only speaks indirectly. The real is Lacan’s word for that which exactly one is speaking about when speaking indirectly. The real is that which “resists symbolization”, it is the indicernable and the elusive that evades understanding and cannot be expressed in language without missing something. The real is that which is traumatic for the subject and something wholly impossible. Truth, as that which sophistry gets at indirectly and philosophy formalizes in the _matheme_, is situated in this register of the real.

These impasses of the real remain in the category of the equivocal, but Freud’s entire project shows how one can move from and equivocal expression to a univocal one. Freud bases his entire theory on equivocal expressions like dreams, slips, and jokes (_lalangue_), but what his project enacts is a move from the equivocal expression, to some univocal truth about the unconscious. Lacan’s _mathemes_ are a similar move from the equivocal to the univocal through formalization of the equivocal. This is why he says that the _matheme_ is a formalization of the impasses. Through formalizing the impasses of the real in the _matheme_ the psychoanalyst (mathematician) can approach truth in this domain of the real. Slavoj Zizek lays out this method of getting at the real with the _matheme_ by claiming that

> “for Lacan, the Real can only be demonstrated through formal logic, not in a direct way, but negatively, through a deadlock of logical formalization: the Real can only be discerned in the guise of a gap, an antagonism. The primordial status of the Real is that of an obstacle, the absent cause of a failure, a cause which has no positive ontological consistency in itself but is present only through and in its effects. To put it succinctly: one tries to formalize the Real, one fails, and the real _is_ this failure. This is why, in the Lacanian Real, opposites coincide: the Real is simultaneously what cannot be symbolized _and_ the very obstacle which prevents this symbolization. And this coincidence, the coincidence of a Thing with the very obstacle which prevents our access to is, in other words this overlapping of epistemological failure and ontological impossibility, is profoundly Hegelian.”

In other words, the _matheme_ remains faithful to the old Hegelian dialectical form of seeing how the way in which something fails is also what’s necessary and constituitive of the thing. The _matheme_ fails, but this failure of the _matheme_ to really talk about the real (since the real is always that which resists symbolization and cannot be expressed) _is_ actually the real! Therefore the real as expressed in the _matheme_ is not something to be known or not-known, it transcends such categories and instead falls under what Lacan conceives as something to be “demonstrated” and “transmitted”.

## Iskra’s Choice {#iskra-s-choice}

With this in mind, the ethics and the practice of Iskraism can be made clear. Our answer to the question of “Sophistry or Philsophy?”, “man or woman” or “_lalangue_ or _matheme_?” is that both is best, and the practice of Iskraism is proof of this! All our jokes, copypastas, and ramblings (babblings) are examples of _lalangue_, the attempt to speak indirectly about the real of Iskra. Clearly we see the potential here for a distinctly feminine enjoyment in the joyful mess of language, but there is a masculine side here too. All the math talk, all the philosophy talk, and the entirety of Iskra dot Money serious posts are an attempt at formalizing the real. Though we have not yet gotten to the level of the _matheme_ (we have made attempts but more to come!), I am still here enacting a project of formalization. But lets be clear: I am still trying to be funny! Iskra dot Money is itself just a bit (that I had to pay for), and it is absolutely absurd that we take it seriously. But this seriousness is a good example of what potential we have in formalization. Formalization can still be funny because of the absurdity of it. So what Iskraism enacts is a project of sexual difference, forever split between (feminine) schizo ramblings and (masculine) comedic formalizations. It seems obvious that you need both in order to both be funny and talk about something real[^fn:4].

We are big funny guys, big smart guys, and big schizo guys. Iskra dot Money is absolutely absurd, and I really shouldn’t share this with other people because they don’t really know what’s going on. What is Iskraism? Who is Luka? What is an Iskra? What ramblings are you talking about? Why are you talking about this like it’s common knowledge? The history of Iskraism remains a secret to those uninitiated. But lets be clear: this is all a bit. It’s all one big bit, that nobody really gets because it’s not funny. We do this to be funny but we don’t even get it because all we can do is evoke.

[^fn:1]: For more on the radical potential of indifference in the sexual relation see Javier Rivera’s piece: [Love as Indifference.](https://javierrivera-96889.medium.com/love-as-indifference-967da6ff935e) Those who know me well enough may guess I am venturing into territory I don’t feel qualified to speak on (joke).
[^fn:2]: Alenka Zupancic’s “What is Sex?” and Joan Copjec’s “Imagine There’s No Woman” are the two most authoritative works in this department.
[^fn:3]: Though for Badiou it is much more complicated than that. His opus, Being and Event, enacts a dethroning of philosophy, taking it down from the position of the “love of truth” to merely the “care of truth”. For Badiou, philosophy itself can produce no truth. Truth instead can only come from one of the four conditions of philosophy: politics, love, art, and science. This goes hand in hand with Badiou’s famous thesis that mathemtatics = ontology, insofar as ontology is the study of being (qua being). More on this in the coming months, Iskraism is far too deep in Badiou at the moment to speak any further.
[^fn:4]: This is what the renegade Luka, who thus far has only proven to be a firebrand revisionist in the face of Iskraism, misses in his stupid Medium posts. He is far too serious. Lets remind ourselves that this guy posts about Rosa Luxemburg’s kinks on twitter (and far more unspeakable things on Iskraism) but he wants to write serious posts on Medium. The invite to Iskra dot Money will forever be open to Luka because he is missing out on the ability to do something far better, far more interesting, and far more theoretical (and far more funny).